Making MySejahtera compulsory raises privacy, connectivity concerns, say experts

I was asked by FreeMalaysiaToday to comment on Malaysian Government’s plan to make MySejahtera, a contact tracing mobile application, compulsory in tracing people’s movements. The Malaysian Government has said it is considering making the use of the MySejahtera mandatory and doing away with the manual registration of personal data when people access public places.

Meanwhile, a privacy lawyer, Foong Cheng Leong, said the government should ensure that the data collected would only be used for contact tracing and related purposes.

He also wanted a timeline to be set for the data collected to be destroyed.

Foong called for accountability if there was misuse of the data by anyone, including civil servants.

He also raised the issue of the app’s accessibility as not everyone had a smart phone that could have the MySejahtera app installed.

Similarly, he said, not every business in Malaysia would be capable of generating the QR code to be used for the app. “Manual registration must remain to cater to a certain segment of the people.”

He added: “Instead of forcing people to use it, the government should give incentives to those who use the app. A RM50 e-wallet credit to users is a good way.”


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